I have never fished fairfield. I have a buddy that fished it through the ice a week ago. I'm not sure how he did.
Be careful on the Fairfield pits, they are deep. I ice fished it back in 2000 and 2001 when I was still at Purdue. Four or five feet off the shore you are at 15 fow in some of the lakes. I went there before there was snow on the ice and you can definately see a color difference in the ice over the deep water.
We fished the pits at least once a week in the spring and caught a ton of fish, however, the few times I went ice fishing there I didn't catch anything, probably because the fish were in the deep deep water, which I wasn't going to fish over due to the look of the ice. In the spring the small pit always produced a lot of crappie, gills, bass, and a few catfish.
I know this doesn't help for ice fishing, but here are a couple spots to try in the spring. We caught a lot of crappie fishing the drop off in the area where I put a yellow X, some days we would catch 70 plus fish in a few hours, minnow under slip bobber slowly jigging it back in. The area with the blue X was good during the spawn for bluegill.
There are a lot of monster bass in these pits.
The water is usually very clear so the fish are easily spooked, so it would be best to stand a few feet back from the shore.
